The Test Drive: Chhandomay on Sun Product Reviews

Octave
Orgeron, Sparks and White Noise blogger and contributor to various
USENIX publications, today published
his full review of the T5120
and
T5520 servers.

Titled "The
SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220," Octave opens the review
by explaining that these products represent a huge advancement in
server technology for SPARC customers and calls the servers "amazing."

Octave explains that the UltraSPARC T2
processor is the second
generation of the CMT processor
design from Sun and notes that the
processor is really a "system on a
chip." Its built-in
components, explains Octave, allow for higher throughput and reduced
I/O overhead that would normally require external ASICs or option cards.

Octave covers virtualization as well and notes that one of the unique
features of the UltraSPARC T1 and T2 servers is the ability to
virtualize the server intro discreet virtual machines called logical
domains through an integrated hypervisor, which provides additional
layers or privileged access. He explains that this type of
virtualization can increase the utilization of a single server in ways
that previously were not even possible. It opens the door to
consolidating development environments, infrastructure services, QA
environment testing and production applications.

Octave summarizes the review by explaining that the Niagara servers
offer many unique and exciting features that set it apart from the
competition. He believes that the UltraSPARC T2 processor with 8
cores, 64 threats, 10Gb Ethernet, PCI-E, and cryptographic features are
revolutionary in the computing industry, and ends by saying that it's
amazing to think that not long ago, it would have taken a much larger
and more expensive solution to equal the features and benefits of these
servers.